


Take Me As You Found Me

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-18
Updated: 2011-03-18
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santana marches across the playground on a dare, her mind already moving at rapid-fire speed as she thinks of the ways she’ll get to spend the eight dollars she’s getting for this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me As You Found Me

Santana marches across the playground on a dare, her mind already moving at rapid-fire speed as she thinks of the ways she’ll get to spend the eight dollars she’s getting for this. Noah had to rake almost a whole block of lawns for that money and all she has to do is go introduce herself to the new girl to take it from him? It’s easy money. Easier than the time her older cousin Maria asked her to spy on the boy who lived next door. That time, she had to climb a tree and it took her all of dinner to work up the courage to jump back down.  
  
Except, as she gets closer to the new girl, nestled between the broken swing set and the sand pit no one goes near since Four Eyes Abrams threw up in it, her feet slow her down. She’s starting to get nervous and she’s practically crawling by the time she reaches the edge of the sand box, eyeing the weird pigtails on the top of the new girl’s head and her mismatched shoes. Her mom always yells at her when she leaves the house in two different socks – two different shoes would probably mean no TV for a week, at least.   
  
Noah wasn’t kidding when he said she looked like an alien – her headband is sparkly enough that she’s probably signaling the mothership or whatever, even as Santana inches closer.  
  
Maybe she’ll just tap the girl on the shoulder and run for it. Noah never really made any rules and coming over here at all should get her at least half of the prize money. If he doesn’t think that’s fair, she’ll kick sand at him until she agrees with her. It always works when she wants something from Finn.  
  
She reaches out slowly, her finger hovering over the new girl’s shoulder, holding her breath. She’s almost there, her teeth digging into her bottom lip so hard it really hurts, but Santana isn’t expecting the new girl to whip around. She falls back, tripping over her own feet and landing on her butt.  
  
She can hear Noah hollering at her – something that sounds like “retreat, retreat!” - but Santana has already accepted defeat. She squeezes her eyes shut and waits for the bright light of the alien ship to beam her up. Nothing happens. There’s no tingly feeling in her toes, just an ache where she fell on her tailbone. It doesn’t feel like she’s flying or dropping or even moving. After a minute she opens one eye slowly and inhales sharply.  
  
The new girl is leaning over her, peering down curiously, her nose brushing against Santana’s. “What are you doing down there?”  
  
Santana props herself up on her elbows, wincing, and the new girl leans back, eyes wide. “I’m taking a picture of the sky,” Santana says, her voice thick with sarcasm.  
  
She doesn’t get a chance to ask “ _what does it look like I’m doing?_ ” before the new girl flops down next to her, blue eyes darting around wildly. Her weird head digs into Santana’s side and Santana shies away from the contact, her fear of alien germs suddenly suffocating.  
  
“How do you take a picture without a camera?”  
  
It sounds like a genuine question and that trips her up a little – so long that by the time she opens her mouth to answer, the new girl has already wriggled up the grass and pulled Santana flat on her back, propping her head up on Santana’s shoulder.  
  
Santana looks down at the new girl as much as she can but it doesn’t look like the blonde is going to move. She huffs and nudges the girl in the side, but it only makes the new girl turn, her hair in Santana’s eyes and nose, sticking to the corner of Santana’s mouth.  
  
“Your pom pom is in my face,” Santana says gruffly, after she bats away one of the blonde girl’s pigtails. “Why do you got them anyway? They look stupid.” She pushes the new girl up roughly and sits behind her, yanking the ponytail holders out and combing her hands through the long strands of yellow-colored hair, the way her mom does after she gets out of the tub. Santana wonders if her own hair is this nice to touch: silky and smooth and shiny.  
  
“Does it look better now?” the new girl asks quietly as Santana keeps weaving her fingers through blonde hair, wrapping it around her finger and letting it slide off again. “Does it look like yours?”  
  
Santana’s free hand reaches up to her own head, tangling in the ends of her stringy, knotted hair. It’s matted down underneath her hat and damp with sweat from running around playing Cowboys and Indians with Noah. Her hair is nothing like this new girl’s hair and for a reason she doesn’t understand, there’s this warm burst of something in her chest that makes her close her mouth and ignore the question.  
  
The new girl doesn’t seem to mind not getting an answer. “I wish I could take a picture of the sky without a camera,” she sighs.  
  
Santana frowns. “You can. You just gotta remember what it looks like.”  
  
Hair whips across her face again as the new girl turns around to face her, her eyes even wider than before. “Really?” she whispers. “Like, if I just stare really hard at it, the way I do with my cat, I can remember what it looks like and  _that’s_  a picture without a camera?”  
  
“Uh,” Santana says, going cross-eyed as the girl leans closer. “Maybe. That’s how I do it.”  
  
“I’ll do it that way too,” the new girl says, nodding her head so hard Santana thinks it might fall off. “Then we can be the same.”  
  
Santana nods slowly. “If you want, I guess.”  
  
The girl grabs her face, her hands sticky against Santana’s cheeks. “Of course I want to,” she says seriously. “That’s what friends do, right? My little sister and her friend Wes, they always cry the same.”  
  
Suddenly, Santana realizes the playground is quiet around them. The bell must have rung but no teacher has come out to find them yet, hidden away in the corner of the playground that no one uses anymore. The word “ _friend_ ” sounds loud and weird when she says it over in her head. She doesn’t have a lot of friends: Noah, but only because he’s the only one who likes cops and robbers as much as she does, and Quinn, but definitely only because her mom says she has to be nice to the girl. Santana could care less, really. If she’s nice and doesn’t throw dirt at Quinn’s ugly dresses, her mom gives her an extra helping of breadsticks when they go out to eat.  
  
But this new girl and her big eyes and her smooth hair is in her face, saying the word friend like Santana didn’t just come over here for some money so the next time the Ding Dong cart came through, she didn’t have to beg her mom for money. And Santana kind of wants to say yes to whatever question the new girls is asking, if only so she can say she got a friend before anyone else did; that she was the one to work up the courage before any of the boys or Quinn or Rachel Berry.  
  
So Santana nods a little faster this time. “Sure. Finn and Noah wear the same underwear on Fridays. I know, ‘cause I always make sure to give them a wedgie and check.”  
  
The new girl makes a weird face but Santana will just have to show her, on Friday, how fun it really is.  
  
The sky was actually kind of cool to look at – she thought she saw a could shaped like an elephant before – so Santana nudges the new girl in the shoulder to move her out of the way and lays back down again, face up. She should go back inside and finish working on her letters but the cloud above her kind of looks like an upside down camel and the new girl is pinning her to the ground anyway.  
  
“I’m Brittany,” the blonde says. She pushes up on her elbow, digging the bone into Santana’s stomach. “What’s your name? I can make a bracelet with our names on it.”  
  
Santana frowns. “I don’t want a bracelet,” she says harshly. “They’re stupid.”  
  
Brittany’s eyes get shiny and she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth all weird-like and Santana panics because her little cousin makes that face right before she cries for hours and hours.  
  
“Santana,” she says quickly. “Santana. S-a-n-t-a-”  
  
“Like Banana?” Brittany asks quietly, her voice wavering.  
  
Her dad calls her Santana-Banana sometimes and it’s  _their_  special thing, but she nods anyway. “Just like Banana. But with a t, too. Don’t forget the t.”  
  
Brittany’s fingers wrap around Santana’s wrist bone and stay there, her hair catching on the corner of Santana’s mouth again. She thinks about pushing it out of the way but the wind blows and pushes more hair into her face so she closes her eyes and tries really hard not to sneeze. The sun feels warm on her face and Brittany’s hand is still wrapped around her arm as she feels herself fall asleep.  
  
When she wakes up, Noah is leaning over her, sucking spit back into his mouth. She braces herself to jump and chase after him when he runs but Brittany is still halfway on her, one hand around Santana’s and the other balled up under chin, her mouth hanging open a little. Santana drops her head back against the grass and sighs heavily.  
  
“Banana,” Brittany says sleepily.  
  
“What?” Santana rubs the crusty things out of her eyes.  
  
Brittany rolls over, half of her sticky face against Santana’s arm. “I think he spit on me,” she says into Santana’s t-shirt.  
  
By the end of the day, when Noah is hiding behind his dad’s legs as their parents come to pick them up, Santana ends up with the eight dollars he bet her, the rest of his snack, and she’s cut a chunk of his hair off with the wavy scissors. Her mom takes her and her new friend to the cool restaurant with the breadsticks and doesn’t even bring up the stain in Santana’s new shirt or the scratch across her cheek from when Brittany tried to help and ended up hitting Santana instead. She doesn’t even care, much, because her mom is smiling at Brittany and telling her how pretty her hair is and how nice she is to use her manners.  
  
Santana will have to work with the blonde on the manners part and the hitting-Santana-when-she-should-be-aiming-for-someone-else thing, but Brittany?  
  
She just might be the best thing to happen to Santana since the waitress told her she could bring a breadstick home, for free.


End file.
